He's Still Haunted
by Art-Over-Matter
Summary: He hides it, covers it up. But she knows he's still haunted.


He's still haunted.  
She can tell by the way he makes his coffee in the morning.  
Black with sugar and a side of domesticity that he just doesn't understand. Sometimes he stares into the darkness in the cup and she imagines that he sees some other darkness instead. That he's silently admitting to it that he shouldn't be here. When she says something to him, he'll look up and give her a smile and assure her that he's fine—I'm good, he always says—and if it's her turn to cook he'll put his arms around her waist and press his lips to the crown of her head as she's working. But she catches his expressions when he thinks she doesn't see him. She can see the hole in his heart that can't be filled, and it starts to create a small part of her that aches for him, wishing she could see him grin the way he did all those years ago when they first met.  
He's still haunted.  
She can see it in the way his eyes linger on the shrouded shape in the garage, as if his whole past were under that brown tarp and if he uncovered it it might be the last thing he ever did—and yet in the same he wants to so badly. And she can see it in the way he frowns a little when he starts the truck, as if it just won't satisfy him.  
It's been months since he showed up at her doorstep with the expression of a broken man who expects to never heal. About four, she thinks. Maybe five.  
He seems most alive when he's with her son. He looks proud and amused when they talk about music, and sometimes they spend hours in the backyard playing baseball. She watches them from the back porch or the window—if he sees her, he'll give her a wave and a look that almost convinces her it's getting better. She can look at him and pretend they're just a normal family and he's just a particularly deep-thinking construction worker and everything will be like this forever.  
If she stops kidding herself for a moment she sees the very purposeful effort he puts forth for the two of them. She sees the way he regards Ben sometimes, like someone who knows, maybe, that he shouldn't be this close to a kid. Who knows that most people would hold their children close if they'd heard what he's done. She knows he's trying—he's trying to forget that side of him. He wants to force it down and suffocate it. Because five months latter he's still haunted.  
She can see it in the way he locks every window and every door and checks out each window before bed, sometimes twice. He avoids the news like it's a black hole, can't even glance at a newspaper. The words "mysterious" and "death" put together might as well be his own gravestone.  
She can tell when he refuses to grow close to anyone but the two of them. He has his so-called friends, but they're not, really. And if she urges him to go socialize, he says the same thing he always says. I'm good.  
I'm good.  
I'm good becomes an unspoken code for it still hurts just as his smiles say I'm trying but it doesn't always work.  
He's infuriating and mysterious and endearing and beautiful and she's never felt this way about anyone before.  
He's still haunted in the way he startles. If anything he surprises him—she walks up too quietly behind him, a firework goes off and it sounds like a gun, a door somewhere in the house randomly slams shut—he looks ready to fight. He gets a hardness in his eyes whose source most thirty-one-year-olds could never understand, whose source she can't understand.  
He still occasionally drinks himself sick, and she has to send Ben to bed so he doesn't witness what happens next. The kneeling in front of the toilet, heaving and sometimes crying and shaking his head, saying he's tired. I'm so tired of this. I'm so tired of all of it, Lisa. I'm sorry, I'm just so sick of this.  
He's still haunted.  
She can tell by the nightmares.  
He doesn't wake her every night, but she knows not a night goes by that he doesn't have them. Sometimes it's just a twitch, a start and then he repositions. Sometimes it's sitting up, breathing heavily, skin glistening with sweat. Sometimes it's drowning in sheets, gasping, calling his brother's name. She sits up and put a hand on his shoulder, shushing him, soothing him. She's learned not to ask what it was, because it's always the same and he hardly answers anyway. After a few minutes, he takes her hand and runs his thumb a few times across her knuckles, and she asks if he's okay.  
He says I'm good, because of course he's good.  
Then he kisses her forehead or her hair and settles underneath the covers again. She lies next to him and they fall asleep again until it's time to wake up and make coffee.  
I'm good, he says, and he's still haunted.


End file.
